What could you buy with Perry's security travel tab?

Published 4:38 pm, Sunday, November 4, 2012

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry often talks about setting budget priorities, but his actions are just as important as his words.

Perry is setting a de facto budget priority every time he takes a trip to Italy to promote Texas business development, campaigns for Mitt Romney in Nevada or even takes a family vacation to San Diego.

That's because Texas taxpayers — while mostly off the hook for his direct travel expenses — foot the bill for his security detail's travel costs.

As we've reported, Perry set $2.3 million worth of out-of-state travel priorities from his November 2010 re-election through the end of August. That out-of-state travel tab for his security detail includes his presidential bid, but doesn't yet count his Italian trip or his decision to again hit the trail for Romney in the closing days of the campaign.

The total is a tiny speck in the ocean of the state's $173.5 billion, two-year budget. It's not among priorities Perry mentions in speeches, although he defends the expenditure when asked.

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But it's real money.

I decided to talk to some people about what it could buy instead.

“It could have saved 50 school teachers their jobs last year,” said Clay Robison of the Texas State Teachers Association, citing an average teacher salary of $48,375 (and rounding a bit). More teachers would mean less-crowded classrooms, he said.

Texas has lost 11,487 teachers due to state budget cuts, according to school finance expert Lynn Moak's testimony in a court challenge to the state funding system, noted my colleague Gary Scharrer.

Ana Yáñez-Correa, executive director of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, said $2.3 million could be used for services that help keep people out of lockups or keep them from returning after their release — such as covering the salaries for 46 teachers in the school district that serves the state prison system or increasing the amount spent by juvenile probation departments on prevention and intervention programs aimed at at-risk youth.

“I don't have much to say about his travel, but as it pertains to $2.3 million, you could definitely do a lot of good with that money,” Yáñez-Correa said.

When I interviewed Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht for an unrelated election story, he happened to note that the state had provided $18 million for legal services for poor people in the current two-year budget period, a $2 million drop from last time. The program could use more resources, he said.

“We just can't handle the volume. Last year, we handled about 110,000 cases, and we figure that's about a fourth of it,” said Hecht.

Hecht pointed to the millions of poor people in Texas: “They are veterans, elderly, children. They have legal needs of all kinds — veterans trying to get their benefits, domestic abuse, foreclosures — all the stuff you read about in the papers.”

I didn't bring up Perry's security tab to Hecht, a Republican who faces Democratic San Antonio lawyer Michele Petty in Tuesday's election.

Those I spoke with about his security detail's travel costs didn't quibble with the need for him to be safe. Perry says the Texas Department of Public Safety sets security parameters, and DPS doesn't talk about how it does that.

Some Democrats have called for Perry to reimburse taxpayers from his campaign account for his security detail's travel costs, at least on political trips. Perry has dismissed the idea, calling his travels a valuable way to promote Texas.

“With such big numbers in our state budget, it's easy to get jaded about expenditures that amount to ‘rounding errors,'” said Bee Moorhead, executive director of the Texas Interfaith Center for Public Policy/Texas Impact. “But even very small appropriations can have big impacts — one person's rounding error may be another person's life on the line.”